The streets of Southern, the farthest neighborhood from the castle, are eerily dark and as foggy as always. The residents around here don’t bother spending their few coins to keep the street torches lit. They can’t drive out the darkness of this neighborhood, anyway; this quarter has darkness set deep into its bones.
Southern is the part of the royal city where you go when you want to do something illegal, illicit, or otherwise morally bankrupt. A couple of torches wouldn’t stop it.
I do a rapid calculation. A normal route from Southern to Eastern takes at least forty-five minutes if you follow the main path back through the Central Quarter. But I’m fast, a benefit of my long, muscular legs. And I know my way around neighborhoods that no well-bred person should ever know.
I can make it in twenty, maybe fifteen, if I take alleys.
So I take a deep, fortifying breath, and then sprint, heading past the many decrepit warehouses. My legs carry me through the dirty market square in Southern, and then I push into the tenement alleys, the neighborhood that borders both the Central Quarter and Eastern.
The air smells like poverty here, and I try to breathe in through my mouth to avoid the scent of unwashed bodies.Though Southern is the poorest quarter, it’s not much better in Eastern; nowhere in Sturmfrost is truly well off.
We do hear rumors about how lavishly the Bonded—the king’s elite warriors—live. At the very least, I’m sure they don’t have to worry about their children getting kidnapped from their beds in the middle of the night.
Saela.
The thought fuels me, and I pick up my speed, my lungs and legs burning in tandem. As I near the border of Central and Eastern, King Cyril’s castle looms over everything, the solid gray stone lurching over the city, and its well-lit walls make the streets brighter.
I duck under clotheslines and hop over broken cobblestones, faster and faster and faster, racing through the edges of Eastern and finally into our quarter’s market square. It’s cleaner than the one in the Southern Quarter, actually put to use by the people in our neighborhood.
The sound of a mother’s wailing carries through the night air. Please, goddess, no.
A crowd huddles together in the fog. I push forward, shoving through the other citizens gathered around until I reach the center.
Not my mother, not my mother, please.
The woman on the ground looks up at me, her eyes wet. It’s Mrs. Sawyer, a seamstress who lives several streets away from us. Her husband and older sons surround her. She wails again.
“Leesa,” she moans. “Leesa!”
The knot in my chest loosens but doesn’t go away.
Leesa Sawyer is one of Saela’s good friends from primary school. She always begs me to show her how to throw a punch, but I know her straight-laced parents wouldn’t like that. Leesa’s bright-eyed and funny and clever. Or she was.
Now, Leesa is just the latest in an ever-growing list of kids that have disappeared.
And the Nabbers never return what they take.
Backing away from the crowd, I try to calm my breathing, still erratic from my run. Then I make my way toward my home. All the dwellings around here are half-timbered and stone, and our home is no exception, although it sits shorter than its neighbors. My father always said he was going to add a second story on it once the baby was born.
Of course, he never returned from the war to build it.
I head down our darkened street, my steps echoing off the stone buildings. The shingles on our roof look worn, I notice—it’s time to replace a few of them. Another task for another day.
The interior is dark, except for a single candle burning on our bare wooden mantelpiece in the living area.
Mother paces back and forth, her dark hair unbrushed and wild. She’s muttering to herself, yanking at her moth-bitten nightgown, which is inside-out. When she spots me, her eyes alight with an awful, vacant recognition and I wonder which stranger I’m about to get.
She doesn’t know me when she’s like this. She doesn’t know anyone, lost to a world of her mind’s own creation. Sometimes, she’s sweet in her madness, cooing and loving. And sometimes, she’s violent, breaking the few possessions we have and raising her hand to us.
When she gets like this and I’m not here, Saela knows to lock herself in our room from the inside. Only I have the key.
“Lumina!” Mother exclaims now, her voice pained. She races up to me, clutching my arm tightly, almost painfully. “Oh, Lumina. They’ve been terrors today, the twins. They’re trying to find you, but they never listen to me, never, never, never?—”
“Mother, hush.” I run a hand down her hair, gently, calming. Lumina and the twins, whoever they may be, are some of hercommon delusions. “Come to your bed. I’ll make the twins go away for you.”
I lead her to her room and help her onto the lumpy mattress, then reach for the medicine bottle at her bedside, the one we get from the apothecary. Both he and the medic say it helps with her delusions, and some days it does, but often it’s like nothing will bring her back at all. I feed her a thick, pungent spoonful of the sludgy medicine and pull her scratchy, too-thin blanket over her.
Mother takes the dose without protest, her eyes drifting shut almost as soon as her head hits the pillow. I watch over her until her breathing evens out, and then go check on Saela.
